Book review - The Horror of Love: Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski in Paris and London

THIS is an account of Nancy Mitford’s only real love affair and its title is taken from an exclamation she made to her sister Diana Mosley. Her choice of men, never good, began with gay Scotsman Hamish St Clair Erskine.

The Horror of Love: Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski in Paris and London

They were engaged but his cosmetics, alcoholic giggles and nervous collapses should have been a warning. Her second was Peter Rodd, another drunken party-goer, and she went as far as to marry him. Peter was sacked from jobs but realised it was easier to live off the money Nancy scraped from writing and part-time work. No children; and eventually a hysterectomy.

Peter was sometimes sober during the Second World War and while stationed in Ethiopia he met one of de Gaulle’s aides, Gaston Palewski, who was trying to galvanise the Free French cause in north Africa.

De Gaulle had fled to London after the fall of France in 1940 and when Palewski rejoined de Gaulle there he also brought news of her husband to Mrs Rodd. They met at the Allies Club in Park Lane and that was that. He was an experienced seducer and she, after a life of frustrations, was longing to be switched on.

The Horror of Love: Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski in Paris and London by Lisa Hilton, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20

In the Mitfordian pantheon, Gaston is presented as a bit of a joke and Nancy as rather duped by him. For the first time Hilton emphasises the positive aspects of the relationship and he emerges as a major figure.

He was born in Paris in 1901 into a family of Polish Jews. His father was an engineer and during the First World War Gaston was sent to Brighton College and had an exchange period at Oxford while at the Sorbonne.

Not quite diplomat, not quite politician, Gaston’s ambiguities were suited to war and by the time Nancy met him in 1942 he was de Gaulle’s chief assistant. Their early romance lasted eight months after which her lover had to leave for Algiers.

Gaston’s ridiculousness is largely attributable to his snobbery – he confessed to being addicted to duchesses and high ceilings – but he transformed Nancy’s life, not least as a writer.

Up to this point her work had been a pale shadow of Evelyn Waugh’s. Suddenly her elegant and amusing tone is in the service of an emotional core.

While being bombed and waiting for the war to end, Nancy produces The Pursuit Of Love and dedicates it to him.

It makes her reputation, somewhat compromises his, but on the proceeds she is able to move to Paris in 1947.

Gaston doesn’t ditch her but he has other things to do – such as helping to reconstruct post-war France – and more women to oblige. He and Nancy are never officially a couple and when a previous love reveals Gaston is the father of a nine-year-old boy, Nancy is at a loss and moves to Versailles.

Then in 1969 the awful news: he marries the rich daughter of Anna Gould and a Talleyrand prince. Nancy dies of Hodgkin’s disease in 1973. Gaston, lonely but en luxe, follows in 1984.

Although the book is marred by numerous small errors it is a story with a delicious mix of drama, melancholy and enchantment and Hilton is to be welcomed for rebalancing it sympathetically.